Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software
From: David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 17:33:56 -0400
-----Original Message----- From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 14:30:34 To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip <ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com> Subject: Re: IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software At 04:52 PM 3/13/2002, Mikael Pawlo <mikael () pawlo com> wrote:
First Monday published an article by Johan Soderberg, where Soderberg explores free software from a Marxist perspective.
Alas, Soderberg's article makes several serious mistakes -- among the most serious of which is ignoring the significance of BSD UNIX. Soderberg states, "Today the only challenger to Microsoft's monopoly in operative systems, Windows, is one of these community projects - Linux." In doing so, he completely ignores the significance of BSD UNIX, upon which nearly all of the viable competitors to Microsoft operating systems -- including Linux -- have drawn for both ideas and code. Soderberg states, "The free software community is not as pluralistic as it appears. First mover advantage is strong, maybe even stronger than in commercial developments, because a successful project tends to cannibalise similar projects. One such case is the BSD Unix that effectively was absorbed by the success of Linux." Again, Soderberg fails to recognize the continued growth and success of BSD UNIX.... Perhaps because its truly egalitarian licensing does not conform to the rhetoric of the GPL, much of which borrows heavily from Marx. --Brett Glass For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software Dave Farber (Mar 13)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: IP: Marxist Theory and Free Software David Farber (Mar 16)